November, 2015

Oh, the days — weeks, even — of my university life I spent working out the determinants of matrices. The 3×3 version was the main culprit, of course, usually needing to be split down into three smaller determinants, and usually requiring a sign change in one or two that I’d

Dear Uncle Colin, My teacher recently challenged me to tackle the missing numbers problem below and I don’t know where to start! It’s driving me to disgust with the whole number system. Crazy Old Numbers, Wacky And Yucky #Edtech and gimmicks won’t help students solve this, but considering the nature

It’s a best-seller in France, apparently: the wild-haired but immaculately-dressed Fields Medallist’s story of how he and his colleague solved the Landau damping problem. But therein lies my difficulty with it: I don’t know about, or especially care about, the Landau damping problem. It’s a McGuffin: it might as well

In a departure from the norm, Wrong But Useful tries its first panel game. In a completely original format, our intrepid podcasters trade lies in a panel game entitled Spoof My Proof. On Colin’s team: @christianp (Christian Lawson-Perfect) and @dragon_dodo (Dominika Vasilkova) On Dave’s team: @realityminus3 (Elizabeth A. Williams) and

Dear Uncle Colin, In one of Randall Munroe’s What If? articles he says that the maths of finding a random point on a sphere is a bit hairy. Can’t you just pick a random latitude and longitude? — Surely Places Have Equal Random Expectations You would think so, wouldn’t you,

“‘The book that could change football for ever’ — The Times,” screams the garish orange front cover. Noted football experts Malcolm Gladwell and Billy Beane shower it with praise. Apparently everything I know about football is wrong. Despite all of the dubious hype, The Numbers Game: Why Everything You Know

Dear Uncle Colin, I’m finding it hard to understand why, when you multiply two negative numbers together, you get a positive number. I accept that it’s true, but I was brought up to believe that two wrongs don’t make a right. — Positive Equals A Negative Otherwise? There is a

“Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future” — Niels Bohr (attrib.) Like everybody else, I had no idea who Nate Silver was until I started following his 538 column in the run-up to the 2008 US Presidential election. Like everyone else, I took some solace from his

“$\ln$”, said the student, “of 123,456,789.” He sighed, contemplated reaching for a calculator, and thought better of it. “18.4,” said the Mathematical Ninja, absent-mindedly. “A bit more. 18.63.” The student diligently wrote the number down, the Mathematical Ninja half-heartedly pretended to visit some violence on him, and the student squeaked